'India's tourism to see negative growth rate'

India, the fastest growing tourist economy with well over 14 per cent year-on-year growth rate during 2003-2006 is all set to witness a decline in its international inbound travel in the coming years.

The World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) has predicted minus 7 per cent growth for India for 2009. Growth is expected to slow down further due to global credit crunch and great recession as the council has predicted no growth for 2010, and a modest 5.5 percent compound annual growth rate for the period 2008-2020.

International inbound travel to India peaked at a record 5.5 million arrivals in 2008, and these tourists spent nearly US$ 13 billion (Rs 64,000 crores) according to WTTC . However, growth has slowed down dramatically since 2007, and the situation will get worse unless the country gets its act together.

This warning comes from Indian and foreign experts attending the second international conference on tourism at the Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Lucknow. Proceedings of this conference, jointly organised by IIM Lucknow and IIM Kozhikode, are being brought out in the book ‘Tourism in global village’.

India’s national policy on tourism was announced in 2002 to position the country as a global brand and tourism as a major engine of its economic growth. The efforts paid off, and India saw a growth rate of over 14 per cent till 2006. However, growth rate has slowed down to 12 per cent during 2007, and to 5 per cent during 2008.

According to the international conference on tourism coordinators Anandakuttan Unnithan of IIM Kozhikode and Devashish Das Gupta of IIM Lucknow, "In order to attract more visitors, India needs to increase room supply, open further its skies to increase air capacity, and upgrade its airports, roads and other infrastructure to global standards."

"Tourism development needs to be pursued with a focus on sustainability. This involves checking the indiscriminate growth of tourism, and controlling the associated problems of pollution, environmental and ecological hazard and cultural degradation", they said.

"It is quite worrisome that India's growth rate is declining heavily. Severe outbreaks of infectious diseases could also deter tourists from non-endemic regions" said SS Vasan of Oxford University, chairman of one of the sessions. Dileep Mavalankar of IIM Ahmedabad further explained, "In the event of a severe outbreak of chikungunya or dengue, a four per cent decline in tourists from non-endemic countries would result in a substantial loss of tourism – at least US$ 8 million to Gujarat, US$ 65 million to Malaysia, and US$ 363 million to Thailand."